The Ringmaster's Daughter - A review.

Petter is a special child. Not because he has some physical disability but, because he has got an immense gift. The gift of imagination. The gift that renders him helpless in distinguishing between ‘recalled reality’ and ‘recalled fantasy’, he engages himself in a business both profitable and perilous. He starts distributing his ideas and plots to intellectually challenged individuals who make a living out of building novels around their borrowed framework. With time both wealth and recognition comes to know of Petter. But, his is an extraordinary life. A life riddled with imperfections and anxieties. A troubled childhood combined with a deep sense of isolation makes him commitment-phobic. Though he loves, he loves with a fraction of himself always held back in reserve. Almost in anticipation of a setback.

Maria, the only woman amongst numerous flings who he comes to love truly leaves him for a life in Stockholm. She gives birth to a daughter he is never to know of. Life with its glorious uncertainties moves on for Petter and unexpectedly comes full circle in the most inopportune manner. In times that prove to be both difficult and dangerous for his existence Petter discovers love again. But, this time in the arms of an intriguing stranger in an unknown land. A tortuous road to rediscovery and revelation shatters Petter and takes the reader along with him to his nemesis.

‘The Ringmaster’s Daughter’ is a book which narrates the life of a precocious child with such chosen simplicity that the reader is left asking for more. Jostein Gaarder, in this studied documentary of human nature draws unbiased portraits of characters victim to destiny and circumstance. Though at some places the reader is bound to feel a shade distracted by the advent of a plethora of concomitant tales yet, he is left sumptuously served at the closing paragraphs. He is sure to discover the very intent with which the digressions were designed. He is sure to close the book basking in the glory to have finally read a book which is not didactic on morality but rich in content.

A beautiful book which I am sure will find equal favor with my reader friends.

THE DEVIL'S REVENGE

A sharp pain sprinted across his nerves.
He awoke from his nightmare
Where he only ran.
And ran.
From nowhere.
To nowhere.
A faint light
Like a lure wrapped his vision,
Teased him
And urged him on.
To where he never knew.
It looked like an unending dungeon.
Deep like the womb of some hideous witch,
Dark as the caverns of the lair of death.
And like avarice incarnate in search of gold
He trudged along.
Dug at places where humans slept
And cadavers mocked in shadowy grins.
All along his eyes.
They were his only light.
As in darkness they burnt
With a primitive glow
Giving him strength, shutting his senses
To more sinister predators of night.
The Devil waited.

As in love and hatred
As in life and death
As in pleasure and pain.
He ran wild and blind.
The thorns of the bushes slashing his flesh
In careless cuts and brutal bruises.
He replied the paining numbness with a divine smile
Hanging off his lips.
Lips as red as a crimson gale
He was no human.
He was no ghost.
A tear drop welled somewhere.
An agony swelled
In Hell.
And a rose blossomed.
A star cracked
A child cried.
He ran.
A reckless black-curse of lunacy.
With hair askew
Feet bloodied
And like a fear unleashed.
The Devil waited.

Time coughed blood in spurts.
Doors opened.
Doom beckoned.
And in a thin stream of flesh and blood
Life escaped to its last refuge.
Like a heathen crawling
Like an insane craze
Like a winding road.
An endless nightmare.
Sweat poured from within
And his heart raced.
He opened the portal of his fate
Where bent on his knees
He kissed the lifeless hand.
And disrobed the dead
To lay a wreath
On his lifeless child.
The Devil grinned.

TALES FROM FIROZSHA BAAG................. A REVIEW

A book which blends the essence of story telling with a clarity characteristic to novels ‘Tales from Firozsha Baag’ will remain etched into the creative recesses of my mind for its disarming simplicity and absorbing diction. Moreover, Rohinton Mistry brings to the narrative an unmistakable veneer of humane understanding and compassion - a welcome leitmotif throughout the book. It proved to be a book both provoking and nourishing to the mind famished of good literature in recent times.

The book is a collection of short stories which chronicles various facets of the lives of people living in a Parsi housing complex. The different blocks of Firozsha Baag and their tenants lend their lives to the lively paint-brush of Mistry who with his masterful strokes inspire awe with aplomb amongst his readers. From the fretting Rustomji who resents boys playing cricket within his earshot to the jovial raconteur that Nariman Hansotia is, from Najamai and Tehmina of C Block who share a grudging symbiosis to Jehangir Bulsara and his travails of adolescence, Mistry unearths all in his own soulful rendition of life in its truest form and honest colours. His portrayal of poverty and need in the Bulsara household is as true as his juvenile mischief while narrating the playful atrocities committed by Pesi padmaroo and his cohorts.

A colourful collage of inter-related short stories, ‘Tales from Firozsha Baag’ resonates with the troubles and tribulations, dreams and disillusionments, memories and monomania of an entire community marginalized over ages. My personal favourite was the story ‘Exercisers’ which in its blissful tactlessness described the pleasuring volatility of teenage love, its unformed edges stained with emotional outpour and the searing despair at the end of it all. After reading the story my heart went out to the unsuspecting naiveté of Jehangir and his tryst with the wondrous phenomenon of love. To me this was the swelling point of the book and then it just ebbed a bit like in a play with a mistimed catharsis. Still, I relished the book with gay abandon and would recommend it to all with the sincerity of an avid aficionado of short stories that I am.

A zillion “Thanks” to a dear friend who recommended Mistry to me..... And another zillion for the one who took the trouble to find this one for me from the literary labyrinths of BCL.

I loved it well.